Enlightenment and Revolution Democratizing Institutional

Enlightenment and Revolution

Democratizing institutional trends almost always follow their endorsement by philosophical reasoning. This was true with the governments of ancient Athens and the more modern United States; it was also apparent in many of the Reformation movements that took place within and around the Catholic Church. But arguably the most direct link between individualistic and humanistic trends in philosophy and the establishment of a democratic -- or at least more democratic -- government occurred in the transition of the Enlightenment thinking of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and its lead up to the French Revolution and Napoleon's republican government.

Much of this Enlightenment thinking actually took place across the Channel in England. During the civil war there, Thomas Hobbes wrote his seminal Leviathan, which laid out the basis of his idea of government based on social contract theories. One of the basic tenets of all social contract theories is that governance stems from the consent of the governed. Though this seems like an obvious statement to our modern democratic sensibilities, this idea was not at all universally accepted at the time Hobbes proposed it in the seventeenth century. European monarchs of this time were still claiming divine right (though during the actual time of Leviathan's publication, Cromwell was in charge of England and there was no sitting monarch, other countries -- notably France -- were still ruled by kings claiming this direct mandate and authority from God), and the rights or even the consent of the people was not a major consideration for many major governments. Even today, though this consent seems implicit in our democratic society, it is hard to think of a situation where demanding that the government must derive from my consent would have any immediate effects -- certainly not in, say, getting out of a parking ticket or living rent-free in my landlord's property.

Still, Hobbes did not believe that the masses had many rights -- these rights were granted to the sovereign, be that a monarch or some sort of assemblage, in the social contract that everyone else agreed to, too. Revolution could never be warranted under Hobbes' scheme; the contract implied that the sovereign power could do no wrong as it had been given full right to act for the populous. Locke took parts of the social contract theory, but had a far more liberal approach. He believed, like Hobbes, that the reason for the establishment of a government or any sort of civil society was to find a way to resolve conflicts and defend life, health, liberty, and property without resorting to mere physical force. This stemmed from Locke's belief that humans were inherently ruled by reason, even if it was selfish reason. This also led him to the belief that revolution was not only permissible, but in some cases even obligated. When governments no longer performed what they were reasonably formed to accomplish, it made no sense to keep them.